The present invention relates generally to distributing content on a network, and more particularly to scheduling the distribution of content on the network based on measurement of network parameters.
Public networks, and most notably the Internet, are emerging as a primary conduit for communications, entertainment, and business services. The Internet is a cooperative interconnection of computing networks, including local and wide area networks. In the Internet, computers from around the world with existing and even incompatible technologies are interconnected by employing common protocols that smoothly integrate the individual and diverse components that are interconnected.
The Internet has recently been popularized by the overwhelming and rapid success of the World Wide Web (WWW or Web). Broadly, the Web is the universe of Internet accessible information. In somewhat narrower scope the Web refers to all the resources and users on the internet that use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”). Internet servers on the Web generally support documents formatted using HTML that enable linking to other documents as well as graphics, audio and video files. Linking is performed by “pointing and clicking” at link icons in a document permitting one to jump from one document to another. This amounts to a graphical user interface to the Internet that facilitates interaction between users and the Internet. The Web links together various topics in a complex, non-sequential web of associations which permit a user to browse from one topic to another, regardless of the presented order of topics. A “Web browser” is an application which executes on the user's computer to navigate the Web. The Web browser allows a user to retrieve and render hypermedia content from the WWW, including text, sound, images, video, and other data.
Content delivery via data networks including the internet is becoming increasingly popular. There are numerous content providers disseminating content via the Internet to various customers. The content providers make this information available to users via websites, and end users access the information using web browsers. So-called “web surfing” of websites using an Internet browser is well known in the art.
The internet is also used by many administrative entities to perform numerous “transactions” as part of services they offer to their customers. The term transaction as used herein refers to any operation using the Internet. Commercial ISPs may update databases. Networked games providers may update new versions of software of games so players can obtain them. Measurement platforms, replication and mirroring entities also have a need to do synchronized or staggered updates. The efficient completion of the transactions may be hampered by various factors that cause delays in transmission across the Internet. These delays may be due to, for example, disruptions in the internet associated with various network events, normal congestion associated with traffic spikes or breaks in Internet links. Measurement of network performance is therefore of great interest, and one technique, using stimulated or “triggered” queries, is disclosed in commonly assigned and copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/945/240, incorporated herein by reference. However, there remains a need to efficiently schedule transactions taking into account variations in network performance over the internet.